Under the rain
by Nuraicha
Summary: The time for saying goodbye has come for Ellie and Hardy. (Rated T only because it has adult themes like murdering)


**Warnings:** Names killer, spoilers for the whole series, post-season 1

**Beta-reader:** My dear Veronica (cricketcrazy2101 in Tumblr), without her I wouldn't post any English fic!

**Author's notes: **First Broadchurch fic, wow! This was hand-written in a notebook when I was trying to study. I just couldn't stop thinking of the final scene of this fic and it had to be written! I think Hardy and Ellie would make a really good couple and I haven't found as much fic as I'd want, so I decided to try myself and write about them.

* * *

**Under the rain**

It was raining heavily when Ellie and Hardy left the hotel.

"Miller, dammit, go back inside because the bloody moonson has arrived!" Hardy protested, staying under the cover of the door's threshold.

"I don't care! Is only a moment, sir!" she insisted, stepping into the rain and covering her head with the hood of her windbreaker.

Hardy grumbled but followed her, cursing his luck of having forgotten his umbrella.

"Really, Miller, I'm not a child, I can arrive alone at my own car," he said, but she only smirked and kept walking.

"I just want to check you're OK. It wouldn't be nice if you just pass out in the middle of the street again," the air was blowing fast and Ellie had to almost scream the last words.

Hardy frowned, swallowing a potentially hurtful response and just commented:

"Well, since tomorrow that shouldn't happen anymore".

Ellie stopped in her tracks, looking at him with disbelief.

"What do you mean?"

Hardy resisted the temptation to roll his eyes: he had to be careful with her. Or at least try to do his best.

"I'm… going to do the heart surgery. Tomorrow," he coughed, slightly annoyed for the way Ellie kept glaring at him. He didn't want to seem weak, not now and less in her company.

However Ellie's eyes brightened in the night and Hardy was shocked to see a smile (a true, proper one) in her lips.

"Oh, thanks to heavens. At last!"

He didn't see that coming, because when he found Ellie in his arms he was baffled. Her hair was wet against his cheek and her hands, pressing below his shoulder blades, felt strangely reassuring and comforting.

Before Hardy got the chance to hug her back, she was already separating from him. He would have sworn she was blushing, but the most amazing thing was she still was smiling. He hadn't seen her smile in ages.

"Come on," she said waving a hand, "the worst thing I need now is catching a cold".

Hardy nodded absently and they reassumed the walk toward his car, in silence.

When they arrived, he was feeling very awkward, the silence now having become almost unbearable for him. It was the time for goodbyes and he wasn't going to see her anymore.

"Miller," he started, feeling his voice raw and unnatural: "I hope you keep going. It was a pleasure to work with you, really".

Hardy felt like a fool after these lame words. For God's sake, she had just discovered her husband was a killer and a paedo, sure there was something more ingenious to cheer her up!

But again, what he could have said? They weren't friends, they were only co-workers. And he was the man who had helped to ruin her life, catching her husband. Surely the thing she wanted the most was having him gone.

Ellie just smirked. By now, she was accustomed to Hardy and his nonexistent social skills. She could cope with this goodbye, it was easier than everything else she was having to go through.

"Same here. You're a great cop, sir. I hope the surgery goes well; give me a ring after you're properly fixed and sown," she had tried to keep her sadness out of her voice, but she knew she hadn't succeed. Alec Hardy was a good detective after all.

The hardest thing was the fact that she knew he never would call and they weren't supposed to see each other again. She had to rearrange her life, in Broadchurch or somewhere else, if Tom couldn't stand it; and he had to rest and clear his name. 'The Former Detectives club' had to end for their mental sakes.

Hardy felt devastated, being witness again to how Ellie's façade was breaking to pieces in front of him, knowing that what were menacing to fall of her lashes weren't drops of rain.

He had been taught in the academy to follow his instinct: it was a golden rule for all detectives and so far it had worked. So he just followed it, taking a step forward and hugging her tightly. Maybe that was the only way to keep all the pieces together.

Ellie gasped, because it was the second time he had hugged her at his free will and it felt weird, but wonderful, all at once.

The rain was still pouring over them and soaking their clothes, but neither of them seemed to notice or care anymore, because the physical contact was soothing their deep wounds.

When Ellie, reluctant, let herself go from his grasp she felt the need to talk, to say something to relieve the tension she was feeling inside. But she couldn't, because her mouth was dry and the words just didn't come.

And in that exact moment Hardy moved again and she couldn't understand why suddenly she was feeling something warm against her lips.

Hardy wasn't able to understand either, because even if he knew that it was wrong and he shouldn't be doing it, he just couldn't bring himself to stop, caressing instead with his tongue Ellie's lips, gladly surprised to find them parting for him, letting him in and kissing back. Blimey, they were kissing and it felt like the best thing in the world.

Alec was so different from Joe, whose kisses were soft, sweet and with all the experience who brings knowing well your wife; on the contrary, Alec was all beard brushing against her cheeks, his tongue moving awkwardly to meet hers, with fear and almost desperation, the sort of fear that comes from doing something wrong. His breath tasted of coffee and something bitter like medicine, and his hair felt soft and soaked between her fingers, her hand pulling his neck towards her against her will. But she wasn't thinking, she couldn't, not when Alec's hand was in the small of her back and he was holding to Ellie like his life depended on that kiss.

Eventually they stopped, pulling back reluctantly, eyeing each other with mild embarrassment. But when their gazes met, it took only a second to start giggling like teenagers who had had their first kiss.

When both of them were had calmed down, Hardy only needed to look at Ellie to know he was going to return to Broadchurch or wherever she was going to be. His instinct never had betrayed him.

Ellie just smiled at him, feeling for the first time in weeks that maybe after all there was a little hope for her.

* * *

**Author's note:** Like one kind guest reviewer noted it (and I can't reply personally to him/her), I thought it would be useful to comment here about the correction he/she did. Actually, if my memory doesn't fail (which is totally possible), I think at least in one episode Hardy drinks coffee (when Ellie doesn't have offered it), even if it seemed for his face he didn't like it very much. I specially wrote he tasted of coffee because my headcanon is that, since she offered it and the murder was resolved, Hardy began to drink coffee more, in part thanks to her. So that reference it was for marking even more the changes the one have done to the other, like it was seen at the end of the series (Ellie being more serious with the suspects and Hardy showing a bit of empathy with them).


End file.
